In January of this year Microsoft launched its PaaS cloud offering: Windows Azure which also hosts SQL too, and Microsoft stated that Azure would complete with Amazon EC2 and other similar IaaS clouds, but this has yet to emerge.
According to techtarget Microsoft will host desktops in Azure as of March 2010:
…Microsoft has announced plans to add support for Remote Desktops and virtual machines (VMs) to Windows Azure, and the company also says that prices for Azure, now a baseline $0.12 per hour, will be subject to change every so often.
Whether or not March time frames land, it is interesting to see that Microsoft are intending to host virtual desktops in the cloud, an area that we are seeing strong interest from clients on.
No doubt there will be a massive marketing campaign from Microsoft to entice corporates to host in their cloud, and will ultimately improve perception around Hyper-V and ultimately drive further adoption of Hyper-V into a private cloud.
Considering cloud for your business but unsure of how, why and when you should adopt it, then contact Charles Barratt or call us on 0845 260 5757.